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This research aims to understand the needs and experiences of the ageing LGBTQIA+ population in Northern Ireland. Across the UK, services for older people generally are very deficient and specific needs of LGBTQIA+ people require particular attention. Limited research exists that explores the human development, well-being or lived experiences of the ageing LGBTQ+ community and what is available has been described as small and underdeveloped (Kneale et al., 2019). Further, it is unclear whether general ageing service providers recognise the specific needs of the LGBTQIA+ community (Hughes et al., 2011). Westwood (2016, 2017a, 2017b) highlights that social care for older people (defined as domiciliary care, housing with extra care, residential and nursing home provision) is perceived to be heteronormative, heterosexist and homo/bi and transphobic by LGBTQIA+ people. Studies have shown that mainstream end-of-life care and bereavement support providers are ill-equipped to deal with the needs of older LGBTQ+ people (Fenge and Fannin, 2009; Almack et al., 2010). Recent research by Caceres et al. (2020) has highlighted that LGBTQIA+ individuals identified concerns related to long-term support and care planning and fear of discrimination from long-term support providers. LGBTQIA+ people in this study also identified a need for increased training of providers to improve the care of LGBTQIA+ older adults in long-term support provisions. It is clear from the available literature on LGBTQIA+ ageing that there are gaps in knowledge, particularly in terms of the ageing LGBTQIA+ population in NI regarding their physical and mental health needs, their experiences of health and social care services and what impact these have on their overall well-being.

Contact Lauren via email here.

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Explore the perspectives, understanding & experiences of childcare social workers throughout Northern Ireland relating to children and young people's involvement in decision-making processes that are applicable to their care and wellbeing.

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My doctoral research explores children’s lived classroom experiences and everyday language use, focusing on how bilingual learners participate and make meaning in diverse school contexts across Northern Ireland. Ethical judgement is placed at the centre of the work, recognising that responsible AI system design begins with how data is generated, interpreted, and validated, not at the point of technical development. Guided by Evidence Centred Design (ECD) and the European Commission’s Trustworthy AI principles, the study establishes clear criteria for what counts as a valid representation of bilingual learner interaction in Key Stage 2 classrooms. It also, in an exploratory way, considers how small, carefully collected datasets might be augmented using locally hosted LLMs while maintaining transparency, contextual sensitivity, and ethical safeguards. The overall aim is to strengthen the foundations for future Virtual Teacher Learning Environments (VTLEs) used in teacher education.

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Using a participatory and rights-based approach to develop a measure of children's experiences of poverty in Northern Ireland, with a particular focus on the experiences of black children.

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My study aims to explore how care-experienced young mothers navigate their experiences of motherhood, support and identity within the social, cultural and policy contexts of Northern Ireland, through a participatory and rights-based research approach.

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My study seeks to explore the experiences of those who left Ulster in the mid to late nineteenth-century and who made the tenements of the industrial urban American North their home. Both this time period and the urban experience in general of Ulster immigrants to the United States have been largely overlooked in the historiography and my study seeks to understand these people's lived experience through space and the lenses of materiality and domesticity, also providing additional opportunities for interpretation in the Ulster-American Folk Park.

Contact Caoimhe via email here.

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My PhD investigates how whole‑community approaches can address educational underachievement, with a particular focus on the role of community organisations and the ways they collaborate with schools to support learners

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My doctoral research explores how Ulster emigrants to North America between 1845 and 1900 constructed and sustained a sense of “home” through personal correspondence. Rather than treating emigration as a moment of rupture or exile, the project looks at letters as active spaces of belonging, where home was continually made and remade through relationships, obligation, memory, and everyday communication. By tracing how ideas of home travelled and were nurtured through correspondence and social networks across the Atlantic, the research presents Irish emigration as a story of continuity rather than dislocation.

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Alannah Travers is a PhD student at Queen's University ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ (QUB) School of Law as part of a Collaborative Studentship by the Department for the Economy (DfE) and the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, under the supervision of Professor Luke Moffett and Dr Conall Mallory. Her research project, Algorithmic Warfare and Civilian Harm, seeks to address how the increasing use of AI-decision support systems, algorithmic targeting and autonomous weapons are reshaping the legal and moral status of the civilian in armed conflict, and how global power imbalances are driving regulation (or not). The gap between the development and regulation of Big Tech and emerging military technologies, including autonomous weapons, poses one of the most urgent legal and ethical challenges of our time. She hopes to explore and give space to the impact of algorithmic warfare on the very way that the 'human' and 'civilian' are understood and valued within the legal and ethical frameworks of war.

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